Exaggerations of World Commission on Dams: Brazil’s water resources secretary vs IRN

by Raymundo Garrido, Glenn Switkes

Exaggerations of the commission on large dams, by Raymundo Garrido
March 27, 2001 (translated and edited)
A meeting of Brazilian government technicians with the World Bank took place in Fortaleza to evaluate the Final Report of the World Commission on Dams, which was produced over a period of more than two years by scientists from various countries, and which had as its focus the future of large dam construction. The explicit question was the social and environmental impacts generated by this type of project, and the implicit symptoms of this question are evidenced by the expectation of alternative forms of electrical energy production.

In terms of environmental impacts, there is no doubt that the points discussed in the report are relevant to the perfection of the construction and operation of dams. Items such as sediment accumulation in reservoirs, the removal of families, the eventual compromising of biodiversity, the reduction of fish stocks, and the loss of flooded areas that would be of use for other productive activities and the insertion of this scenario in a region are questions that must be analyzed in dam projects. Nevertheless, the commission’s report appears to exaggerate the question of resettlement of families, maximizing the weight of this item in detriment to all others, and comes to the extreme conclusion of making large dam projects conditional on the opinion of the minority directly affected by the project. We have nothing against minorities. But you cannot invert the representative process which does not legally give specific communities the right to make decisions on public utility projects. The commission was so audacious as to even propose the relicensing of dams every five or ten years, which would bring goosebumps to the procedural norms and expectations of investors, which are only now in their formative process.

The advanced Brazilian legislation for the water resources sector leaves this question to the river basin committees, formed by representatives of the three levels of Executive Power, of water users, and of organized civil society. This process reduces the risks of a group that does not represent the majority view imposing its will. It is important to note that dams produce local environmental impacts which are not all necessarily positive, but it also produces an immense range of attractive positive impacts. What is most important is that the unfavorable impacts be reduced, and that we gain the greatest advantage from the positive impacts, maximizing the social and private costs and benefits.

Let’s take, for example, what happens with a hydroelectric dam. The energy generated will attend the needs of modern life thousands of kilometers away in cities and rural areas. In Brazil, the concept of best use of a river basin for hydro-energetic generation includes conditioning it on all costs and benefits, with an enormous emphasis on environmental protection. In the case of multi-purpose dams, the benefits can include social objectives such as food production, water supply for urban and rural communities, the maintenance of navigable waterways, and energy generation itself. Dams serve to promote economic development and, for this reason, cannot suffer such condemnation as that decreed by the commission’s report, under the risk of compromising the development of countries, such as Brazil, which have a high hydroelectric potential to make use of.

Brazil built and still builds some of the largest and best executed and operated dams in the world. The engineering of the country, in this field, is perfecting its environmental protection work. At the close of the meeting, it was clear that Brazil will continue to construct and operate well-executed dams, and that the World Bank will also continue to finance this type of dam.

Response by Glenn Switkes, International Rivers Network,
April 9, 2001 (as published)
The arrogance of Mr. Raimundo Garrido, Secretary of Water Resources of the Environment Ministry caused me discomfort in his article “Exaggerations of the large dams commission”. The article calls the report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) “an exaggeration” because it subjects the construction of a large dam to “the opinion of a minority of those affected by the project”. The role of the independent WCD is to analyze whether these projects contribute to promote development and to draw up guidelines which improve the decision making processes.

What does this commission state that is an exaggeration? That families that lose their way of life, their lands and homes to the construction of a dam have the right to be beneficiaries of what is called development.? Mr. Garrido is against this? The WCD suggests “informed participation” by all actors, including the dam-affected, in decisions on new projects.

Despite the fact that the discussion on the social impacts of large dams, and the search for energy alternatives is taking place world-wide, the Brazilian government prefers to continue in its out-of-date mold. According to Mr. Garrido, “Brazil built and continues to build dams which are among the largest and best-executed and operated in the world”, appearing to indicate that the Brazilian electric sector need not learn from its past errors, but rather can continue to promote announced disasters such as the strangling of the Tocantins and Araguaia with 14 large dams. The WCD report is a sign that the participation of the dam-affected in the decision-making process, along with the diversification of energy sources, and improved efficiency in generation, transmission, and consumption are the wave of the future.